The Octo-Fearies
This is the first episode of The Octo-Fairies. In this episode, the Octo-Fairies get overconfident, and say that they’re not afraid of anything. But on that day, they discover a part of their headquarters that no one else knows about. The episode begins at the headquarters, where a music-loving girl named Chief Bethany is teaching her team about Magical Music, a type of magic that involves using magic with music. When it’s time of practice magic, Bethany says that they will be given a test by their mentor, The Mentor, and she encourages her team to practice for the test. At the garden, the laid-back Kara sarcastically suggests asking one of the trees for help in practicing for the upcoming test. As she and her friends share a laugh on their way to the artifact room, something inside a nearby drain gives off a faint glow. In the artifact room, the Octo-Fairies gaze at things they’ve gotten on their missions and adventures. But Kara and the energetic Peona have trouble understanding the course material, the intelligent Selina becomes preoccupied by a book of flowers, and the spiritual Delancy dozes off into a state of mind. Despite this, the six remain in positive spirits. Bethany overhears them as she puts her Scepter of Light into its case. She expresses how great it is that her and her team are so relaxed about the upcoming test, but then the six fairies become overconfident about their fears, including the strong Trixie saying fears are “mere phony-balonies”, Selina saying that brave people can’t be frightened, Delancy saying she’s not afraid of anything, Kara and Peona saying that nothing can scare people with courage, and Bethany says that the Octo-Fairies can’t be scared. The team each comment on each other’s words and think they cannot be scared. They return to practicing their magic, and after hearing each other’s words, they laugh about timidity and cowardliness, and some of them start to wonder if they really are afraid of anything, but they deny it. Just then, the fairies hear a strange sound in the artifact room, and discover it is in the center of the room and see an open floor gate with a mysterious crystal root sticking out of it. Inside, they find a large cavern filled with more crystal roots, and they encounter what appears to be them, but they glow and speak to them in a bizarre, mystical tone. These “Octo-Fairies” sense that the real Octo-Fairies are “not one” and they tell them that they’re not afraid of anything because they’re brave people. The “Octo-Fairies” don’t accept this and decide to give the real Octo-Fairies a test. If they fail to pass the test before morning, they will remain trapped in the caves forever. The fairies are all suddenly teleported to different parts of the caverns. Bethany finds herself in a very silent room, and she discovers nothing makes a sound in the room and she can’t hear herself speak. Peona ends up in a small enclosure that gets even smaller whenever she touches certain shafts of light. Delancy finds herself in a room, where she sees elemental demons appearing right in front of her. Kara encounters a pair of girls having a conversation about mushy love, and she is unable to escape from them. Selina finds herself in a room with hundreds of vines, and they start to ominously grow towards her as she runs. Finally, Trixie finds herself in a room with a lot of holes, and out of the holes comes extremely sharp needles. She seems okay at first, but after seeing the number of needles, she begins to run from them. Inside her small, shrinking enclosure, an increasingly panicked Peona assures herself that if this is a test, there must be a solution. She realizes that there are two different colors of lights shining in - touching the purple lights makes the enclosure shrink, and touching the yellow lights makes it widen. After touching enough of the yellow lights, Peona makes the enclosure wide enough for her to squeeze out through a small opening before she gets crushed. Meanwhile, Kara’s runs through the cave tunnels keep circling her back to the conversation with the two girls. She asks them what she has to do in order to pass her test and escape, and they hint that she likes lovey-dovey things, but fears admitting it. Begrudgingly, Kara joins in the conversation and laughs along with them. Elsewhere, Delancy cowers in fear of the elemental demons and also fears of what they’ll do to her. Turning away from the demons, she takes a breath. When Delancy tells herself she’s spoken to many spirits and demons before and talks to them bravely, she overcomes her fear and the demons vanish. Back at the caves’ entrance, Kara meets up with Peona. They notice that the way out of the caves is still open and reason that if any other fairy were in their situation, they would escape and leave the others behind. Realizing that the Octo-Fairies do have fears, they decide to stay and find their friends so that they can all escape together. Meanwhile, Trixie continues to dodge the upcoming needles popping up from everywhere in the room. When all the needles have popped up, she gets so nervous, she collapses. When Kara finds Selina, Selina is tangled up in the vines and is too overwhelmed to escape from their grasp, saying that nature’s turned against her. Kara assures Selina that nature would not want to turn against her, and in an effort to help her overcome her fear, Kara herself admits that she likes lovey-dovey things. With Kara’s help, and the reminder that she can control nature and it’s magic, Selina conquers her fear and untangles herself. In another part of the caves, Peona finds Bethany shaking in fear, due to the silence and quietness of the room, but Bethany is able to speak again. Peona tells Bethany that there is silence because there is no sound, and she helps her overcome her fear by admitting to her own fear of small spaces. With Peona’s encouragement, Bethany sings beautifully and makes music in the cave, regaining the room’s sounds. With both of their fears conquered, Peona and Bethany head to find the rest of their friends. At the caves’ entrance, Peona and Bethany meet up with Selina and Kara, but Delancy and Trixie are nowhere to be found, and the entrance is slowly closing. Just then, Delancy arrives and goes off with her team to track down Trixie. Still collapsed on the ground, Trixie gets up and stops being scared of the needles. Trixie ducks, jumps and goes around the needles without getting pricked by them. After dodging the needles, she says that she’s afraid of needles but because she cares about her friends, she’d go through anything to help them no matter what gets in her way. Because of this, Trixie passes her test, and the needles revert back into their holes, and the holes vanish just as the rest of the team arrives. With the six of them together again, the fairies return to the cave entrance, but it has closed too much for any of them to fit through. Just then, the “Octo-Fairies” appear before them again, and they realize it is not them but the Spirits of Harmony themselves. They also explain that the Octo-Fairies themselves chose how their biggest fears manifested and that they overcame their fears for each other’s sake. Because the Octo-Fairies have passed the Spirits of Harmony’s test, they are finally able to return to the artifact room. There, they have a conversation about what they experienced underneath their headquarters. But at the end of their conversation, the fairies realize something; the test they have taken was the test they were about to take. They had the courage to conquer their fears and their friendship helped them get past their fears. They learned that their overconfidence had to be taken care of and that even they can get scared sometimes. The episode ends with the Octo-Fairies leaving the artifact room and the floor grate glowing.